Salon.com's Person of the Year: S.R. Sidarth
Time magazine's person of the year has become something of a media phenomenon in and of itself. Forget the fact that the increasingly irrelevant "news magazine" is heading the same direction that Life went a generation ago, its annual coronation of some lucky individual is still enough to sell a few copies and generate a small amount of buzz. The magazine took a noticeable nosedive in 2001, however, when they decided to make Rudy Giuliani person of the year, despite the fact that the title is meant to be bestowed on the most influential person of that past year, who (even if you hate him, his impact can't be denied) unquestionably should have been Osama bin Laden for orchestrating the 9/11 attacks. Since then it has been getting worse, reaching what may be its nadir with this year's cover, depicting "You," complete with a mirror-image computer monitor, the savvy net user, as the person of the year.
Though it may be a bit premature, I'm predicting this issue marks the end of what little impact Time magazine still has on the world, and hopefully we can all move onward to better things. Certainly others are trying, and Salon.com makes an impressive case for another person of the year: S. R. Sidarth. The man who brought the term "macaca" into the vernacular, and brought down a giant of a Republican politician, significantly changing the political landscape of the country.
Sidarth is right that the macaca incident played a pivotal role in the election. It just may not be the role he imagined. Sidarth wants to believe it means the race card is losing its potency in the rural South. Pundits wonder about the long-term implications of homemade, unfiltered, viral webcasts on political campaigns. But the real message of macaca may have been the kid behind the camera.
Jim Webb eked out a statewide victory on the basis of massive margins in the booming suburbs of northern Virginia. Macaca and all the missteps that followed helped convince voters in these affluent, well-educated and increasingly diverse zip codes outside Washington that they had grown tired of George Allen. But the same voters may also have recognized Sidarth, born and raised in northern Virginia, a straight-A student at a state college and a member of the local Hindu temple, as their neighbor. Allen was just a California transplant with dip and cowboy boots who had glommed on to the ancient racial quirks of his adopted home. Sidarth was the kid next door. He, not Allen, was the real Virginian. He was proof that every hour his native commonwealth drifts further from the orbit of the GOP's solid South and toward a day when Allen's act will be a tacky antique. Allen was the past, Sidarth is the wired, diverse futureĀof Virginia, the political process and the country.
The excerpt is a helpful summation but the entire article is short, readable, and worth taking a look at. The "macaca" incident took place in late summer, when support for Bush and Iraq war was sliding but hadn't landed in the garbage just yet. Republicans were still cautiously optimistic about keeping control of the house and the senate wasn't even considered to be "in play" for the Democrats. George Allen was a guaranteed victory and almost a surefire candidate to seek the Republican nomination for president in 2008. And a single man, much more representative of the changing face of America than the tired stereotype of the bigoted Southerner the Allen campaign catered to brought a key player in the party to his knees, and set the stage for the dramatic victory of the Democrats in November, which will reshape American politics for at least the next two years, and made the talk of a "permanent Republican majority" a bad joke rather than a dismal prospect.
Comments
elmoloveftl
Fort Lauderdale, FL
December 2006
DEC 18, 2006 09:26 AM
undershaker
Milwaukee, WI
November 2004
DEC 18, 2006 08:44 PM